Democratising the Airwaves

Published in the Press Institute of India's quarterly magazine Vidura (Vol 44, Issue 1, Jan-Mar 2007), this article traces trends in what the author, Vinod Pavarala, calls a "cacophony over the airwaves in India" which "built up into a crescendo by 2005 when the FM radio revolution started striking at the media consumption habits of people beyond the metros..."

Pavarala draws on Bertolt Brecht's thinking as he traces the history of radio in India, noting that Brecht lamented in the late 1920s that radio had been reduced to only a distribution system. Brecht hoped that radio would instead become a medium of 2-way communication - enabling true participation by citizens in public affairs. The author shares this discontent, pointing out that no attempt to solicit people's participation in public service broadcasting, even in the form of feedback, was made until 1956 when an experiment in Farm Radio Forums was conducted with the assistance of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 150 villages across 5 districts of Maharashtra. Between 1959 and 1964, the movement gained strength, and there were apparently 7,500 forums in 30-odd radio stations in the country; however, the movement then languished. In the 1970s, Pavarala explains, an experimental FM station was set up in the Nagercoil district in Tamilnadu. The project successfully elicited participation of the listeners, but, as the author puts it, the station "functioned with methods that did not conform to [All India Radio, or] AIR's top-down approach."

At a meeting in September 1996, Pavarala notes, it was proposed that AIR's local stations should allocate regular airtime for community broadcasting. Subsequently, UNESCO made available a portable production and transmission "briefcase radio station" kit to the end of enabling experimental broadcasts of programmes for a hands-on learning experience towards the objective of setting up an independently-run community radio station. A July 2000 UNESCO-sponsored workshop in Hyderabad issued the so-called Pastapur Initiative on community radio, which urged the government to make media space available not only to private players but also to communities. Various workshops were then held as part of the effort to make the struggle for community radio a South Asia-wide movement; for example, a media-watch website carried out an Internet Conference on Community Radio in India, the edited proceedings of which are available by clicking here.

In tracing the de-monopolisation of airwaves in India, Pavarala characterises the private FM radio licensing policy announced in July 2005 as having made access to the airwaves simpler and more feasible for the commercial players; the social sector, however, he says, "was left high and dry." For example, private commercial FM radio services have not been permitted to broadcast news and current affairs programmes.

In contrast, Pavarala believes that the November 2006 passage of a new government of India policy permitting non-governmental organisations and community-based groups, with a track record of community development work, to set up radio stations is consistent with the Brechtian mandate to use radio as a means to build a robust civil society in the country. The author celebrates these developments, as he believes that radio, with its acknowledged potential for use by non-literate, rural communities, has, to date, been under-utilised in India. In conclusion, he claims that "The creation of an autonomous community radio sector would go a long way in fostering a counter public sphere in which dissonant experiences and knowledge of the marginalised can be freely articulated, exchanged, debated, and developed."